Yakumo Yukari Gapped Me to Another World; Now I'm Trapped in the Human Village Full of Pathetic Touhou Maniacs

Wiki laid his hand upon the Bible, and sighed in relief when he wasn’t incinerated.

“You never know if you might actually be a demon,” said Arnold.

“Shut up,” he said as he wiped some sweat from his brow. He looked down at the pile of ash. “I didn’t know demons were vulnerable to the Bible.”

“If he was, he was too weak to be of much use,” said Patchouli as she handed us each a small stack of paper. “A demon worth their salt recognizes a bible at fifty paces, and sets it alight from a similar distance.”

“A vampire too,” added Remilia. She was staring at her fingernails. They looked extremely sharp.

“So he was probably human,” said Wiki.

“There are many things you don’t know about vampire hunters,” said Patchouli.

“Well, this is off to a great start…” he mumbled.

“We have several roles to fill,” said Patchouli. “We ask that you fill out every page of the application. We favor versatile candidates.”

We all nodded, all except for Wiki.

“Wait, can’t Remilia just manipulate fate so that the best employees show up?” asked Wiki. Manipulating fate was her primary ability, and part of why the Scarlet Devil Mansion itself was a major force in Gensokyo.

“You presume to understand my power?” said Remilia. She forgot to do the voice, but it was still kind of frightening.

“No,” said Wiki. “That’s why… I’m asking questions.”

“I already told you who asks those here.” She waved us away.

“Please note that,” said Patchouli, “as mandated by Miss Yakumo, your answers on the top page will have no effect whatsoever with regard to whether we hire you for a full-time role.”

“That’s a bit odd,” said Wiki. Maroon led us to the table so we could start our applications. We read the questions on the first page.

What is your blood type?

“Concerning,” said Wiki.

What are your height, weight, and body fat percentage?

“Oh fuck no.”

Would you be willing to provide one pint of blood, once every other month, for 5,000 rin compensation and exposure to healing magic?

“That’s actually pretty reasonable…”

Do you care what happens to your corpse if you perish unexpectedly?

“And we’re back to ‘fuck no’,” said Wiki. “Let’s just return these papers, and go home?”

“She said this page wouldn’t matter for hiring us,” said Arnold.

“No, it will, because if we fill this out they might hire us!”

“How are we even supposed to know our weight and… body fat percentage?” asked Sasha. Her brow was furrowed and she wore a tight frown.

“Ah!” said Maroon. “Over here!” She hovered over the white tile I’d noticed before. I realized that it was an ordinary bathroom scale.

“Convenient that there was stone there,” I said.

“Patchouli converted the ground to rock,” said Maroon. “With magic! She is Patch-ouli!” She laughed hysterically, and I tried to chuckle along with her out of pity.

“A scale’s nice, but that doesn’t actually help with–” started Wiki, but Maroon smiled at us and grabbed a measuring tape from one of the other fairy maids. “Ahah.”

“The formula for body fat is written at the bottom of the page,” said Arnold. “It’s a shame, because that’s not super accurate… but measure me! I bet I’ve made gains!”

“While eating mostly potatoes and rice?” asked Wiki.

“Downing Keine’s supplements,” he said. “She gave you some too, right?”

“Right. Gosh, I hope they don’t contain testosterone…” It would explain Arnold’s increasing lecherousness, I supposed.

“What’s next, cup size?” grumbled Sasha.

“I can if you want!” said Maroon.

“No thanks. C’mon, guys, we don’t have to put up with this.”

“We haven’t even heard about the roles,” I said. I didn’t want to prematurely close the door on the Scarlet Devil Mansion. “Look, leave the first page blank if you want. If it really doesn’t make a difference, we’ll be fine, and if it does matter, oh well.”

“Ugh, this is a waste of time…” said Sasha. “But blood money is easy, I suppose. Wasn’t it illegal to sell your blood in the Outside World?”

“The Outside World is a big place,” said Wiki. “Generally, yes. And generally, letting people sell it is a better policy.” While Wiki went on about incentive structures and shortages, Arnold and I measured ourselves. The scale was in kilograms. It shouldn’t have surprised me.

“I gained weight,” I said.

“Me too!” said Arnold. “I knew it!”

“Ugh, let me try that,” said Wiki. He stepped on the scale. “I… lost weight?”

“You are looking a bit thinner,” I said. I flexed my forearm and twisted my hand. “I might be a little bit more muscular.”

“Want to check your weight, Sasha?” asked Wiki.

“No. Fuck off.”

“If you want to sell your blood…”

“I hate fucking capitalism,” she said. She walked over to the scale, and we all politely didn’t look at the numbers. We continued to not look as Maroon measured her arm, waist, and neck. The fairy got shooed away before she could measure anything else.

“It’s too bad that mirrors are so rare in the human village,” said Arnold, flexing his arms. “I bet I look great.”

“There aren’t any at all in the Mansion,” said Maroon. “You do look great!”

“Why are you hanging around us, anyway?” asked Sasha. “Don’t you have duties at the booth?”

“Oh,” said the fairy, her expression falling. She looked at Patchouli and Remilia, who were talking with the last group that had come through. “The Mistress is unhappy, and she’s kinda scary.”

“Fair.”

“Arnold said he wanted a job, didn’t he? I put in a good word, just like you asked!”

“I forgot about that,” said Arnold. “Thank you, though!”

“You’re welcome!” She fluttered forward. “You’re really tall, huh?”

“Yeah…” he said, leaning back. “I get that sometimes.”

“They make me put away the dishes. I can’t reach the top shelf without flying. It’s really hard.” Maroon fluttered around Arnold and measured his arm. “The big bowl weighs almost as much as I do. I’m the most motivated fairy, you know?”

“I believe it,” said Wiki. The other four fairies were sitting around, letting Maroon do all the measuring.

“I’m not the most motivated myself, if I’m honest,” said Arnold. “What are the swords about, by the way?”

“Oh, that’s page two!” she said.

I flipped to page two of the application. It detailed a role: martial arts student. The questions asked about martial schools and physical prowess, things like if we were interested in learning, if we knew any special techniques, and…

What is the largest sword you can lift, single-handedly, of those provided? (answer with the sword’s color or make)

“How odd,” I said, but when I looked up I noticed that Arnold had already gone for the biggest sword, a violet thing with a hilt shaped like a cross.

“Oh my God, this weighs like three hundred pounds!” It was six feet long, but that didn’t seem right. He kept trying to lift it anyway.

“It’s magical!” offered Maroon. “You are supposed to start with something smaller!”

“What’s to stop me from lying about this?” asked Wiki.

“...Honesty?” said the fairy.

“Don’t lie to the vampires,” I suggested. I walked over and hefted an orange, curved blade with a plain guard. Someone had once told me that swords were surprisingly light in order to make them more effective weapons. This sword weighed as much as an overloaded backpack. The idle fairy maids leapt into the air. Perhaps they were worried I’d hurt myself.

With some straining I was able to lift it above my head. Maroon clapped, and the other fairy maids rolled their eyes.

Arnold had gone down a size, then had gone down another. It was comical to see him straining to heft a blue katana like it was a telephone pole, but when he dropped it I couldn’t even get the blade out of the dirt. Wiki joined us.

“Better start with a cocktail sword,” said Sasha.

“I don’t care what you think,” Wiki said, mostly to himself. He hefted the orange sword as well, and I was dismayed to see that he didn’t seem to be struggling as much as I had.

“What, is this made of lead?” he asked.

“It’s magical!” said Maroon. “I said that already.” Wiki dragged it over to the scale.

“It weighs twenty kilos! That’s like… forty-five pounds! Wait, I can lift forty-five pounds?”

“That’s weaksauce,” said Arnold. “Also, that’s about thirty times too heavy for a saber.”

Wiki blinked. “What’s the yellow one?”

“A cutlass.” Arnold looked around. “Cutlass, saber, rapier, jian, katana, broadsword, claymore.” I was vaguely irritated that he hadn't gone in order from smallest to largest.

“I’m one-Touhou-game’s-worth-of-names’ impressed,” said Wiki.

We kept lifting swords. Wiki got all the way up to ‘green jian’, and Arnold did eventually best the blue katana. I was stuck with the yellow cutlass. Sasha didn’t deign to enter the contest.

“I’m stronger than you,” Wiki told me.

“At picking up swords,” I said, ready to blast him with danmaku and the village rules be damned.

“It probably correlates with all kinds of strength,” he said. I waited for him to go on, but perhaps because Arnold was stronger than either of us, he relented. We sat back down to continue our applications.

“This is an offer to teach physical danmaku,” said Arnold. He turned to Maroon. “Who would be the teacher?”

“Miss Hong,” said the fairy. Hong Meiling: the gate guard who was probably a dragon. “She wants to start a class! ‘A Master with Students knows the Art; a Master without knows little,’ she says!” Maroon wrung her hands. “No pay for that, though. And you gotta do chores.”

“The hot one?” asked Arnold.

“I keep telling her that dresses are cooler than pants…”

“Wrong,” said Sasha.

“Well, I hope I’m selected,” said Arnold. He set his ax on the table and finished filling out the second sheet. “I could learn a thing or two from a dragon, I think.”

“She’s a dragon?” shrieked Maroon.

“It’s not settled in the lore,” said Wiki, his hands out and his palms down. “Also, let’s not forget the part about vampires.”

“Sometimes you have to risk it for the biscuit,” said Arnold. If it was an innuendo, I didn’t quite get it.

“Whatever,” said Sasha. “Let’s just finish this so we can go.”

The third page was about household chores. I filled it out as honestly as I could, admitting that I had no experience whatsoever with cleaning a house. Once-upon-a-time I’d had a robotic cleaner, but I’d sold that with everything else.

The application offered room and board, which was something. Those people who hated their roommates would have some options. Being a live-in maid (butler?) didn’t appeal to me, though.

The final page was for ‘magical researcher’ and was a quiz on magic. I wasn’t able to answer any of the ten short answer questions, but I did take a stab at the two essay questions at the bottom.

Calculate the volume of the library in cubic meters, considering the irregular shape and the fact that it's bigger on the inside than the outside. Show your work.

“That’s impossible,” said Arnold. “We haven’t been there!”

“Well, we can do upper and lower bounds,” said Wiki. “The Library is like three floors tall in the games, because people fly in it… so maybe it’s two thousand square meters, and twelve meters tall…” Wiki scribbled on the page as he thought aloud.

“Making shit up doesn’t count as answering a question,” said Sasha.

“Have you been to Gensokyo?” countered Wiki.

“You haven’t been making up the lore you tell us, have you?” I asked.

“Well no, but somebody had to.” He checked himself. “At least, I used to think that. Anyway….”

If you had to use a spell to speed up your cleaning, but each use gradually turned you invisible, how would you manage your visibility levels to ensure you could continue to interact with the mansion's residents?

“That’s fucking easy,” said Sasha. “I’d clean as fast as possible and not interact with anyone at all.”

“I’d put on a coat and gloves when I wanted people to see me,” I said.

“Wouldn’t you get too hot?”

“Not if he’s still emitting blackbody radiation,” said Wiki. “I assume he’s not absorbing it, anymore, although it’s magic so who knows. Being blind would be the bigger problem.”

We finished the applications and returned them. Patchouli accepted them without glancing up.

“There’s just one more part of the screening process,” said the librarian. “The Mistress will look you over, now.”

Remilia stood and cracked her neck, causing all of us to tense up. Her wings unfolded from behind her as she stretched. She spun the parasol. Her eyes began to glow.

“Very interesting,” she said, staring at Sasha with red eyes. She looked at me next. “Acceptable.” Then she looked at Arnold. “Oh ho ho.” Finally, she looked at Wiki.

She looked at Wiki for a long time.

“This one is disqualified,” she finally said. She sat back down.

“A pity,” said Patchouli. “He got two of the magical researcher questions correct.”

“You already graded them?” asked Arnold, amazed.

“There is precious little understanding of magic in the human village,” added Patchouli.

“Why am I disqualified?” Wiki asked, a tremble in his voice.

“Everyone in the Scarlet Devil Mansion falls under my protection,” said Remilia, waving her hand. “The humans, the maids–everybody. When they join us, I tie our fates together. And your fate looks like a giant pain in the–”

Patchouli coughed.

“--inconvenience,” said the vampire. “In fact, the fate of the entire human village hinges upon your choices.” Wiki and not me? What!

“So…” said Wiki, his hands shaking.

“So I want no part of it,” she said. “I prefer to work from the shadows.”

“So I filled this out for nothing. Can you tell me anything more about my fate?”

“I wouldn’t leave the human village if I were you.” God fucking damnit, Remilia Scarlet was ruining my plans!

“I won’t then,” said Wiki. “Thank you.” He turned to walk away. Then he stopped. “Wait. You are afraid to protect me?”

“No,” she said, “Just wise enough not to bother.”

“So you see that I’m going to, I don’t know, die horribly?”

“He is astute,” said Patchouli. Wiki straightened up and his brows furrowed as he faced the vampire again.

“And if you did protect me, that wouldn’t happen?”

She sneered at him. “There are few whose power even approaches my own.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You won’t get one,” said Patchouli. “Fate doesn’t work that way, and neither does Remy.”

“What would it take for me to fall under your protection?” Wiki was positively shaking as he stared her down. The look in his eye was something that wasn’t quite fear. After a moment I realized it was defiance.

“Nothing, human. My favor can’t be bought.”

“So you’re afraid,” he said.

“Taunt me again, and you’ll become a self-fulfilling prophecy!”

“Fuck, I didn’t really get what Jake meant about protecting people,” he said, and I wanted to sink into the ground when Remilia’s gaze briefly turned to me. “But I think I see it now. You need us, but you’re going to throw me to wolves because–because it would be inconvenient not to!”

“Literally, yes,” said Remilia. She smiled a wide, toothy smile. “What are you going to do about it?”

Wiki’s face was contorted in fear and anger. He turned and left.

“If you keep messing with the applicants, no-one will want to work for us,” said Patchouli.

“I wasn’t messing with him,” replied Remilia. I took a deep breath and stepped forward.

“Miss Knowledge,” I said.

“Yes?”

“If I come to work for the Scarlet Devil Mansion, will you teach me how to fly?”

“No,” she said, flatly.

Remilia kicked her. “We’ll lose all of them at this rate.”

Patchouli sighed. “No, I won’t personally tutor you. But I will allow you access to the appropriate materials in the Library, if you get a library card.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“I wish I could say you are welcome.” She turned another page. “If you attempt to steal the books, or copy their contents without my permission, which is the same thing… I’ll immolate you.”

“Understood,” I said. It made me wonder if the same extended to Marisa Kirisame, who supposedly stole from Patchouli all the time. I doubted it; they were also supposedly lovers.

I should ask Marisa how to fly, if I could think of a way to get her attention.

If they wanted me, I would work in the Scarlet Devil Mansion long enough for some self-study, and no longer. I turned around to leave. I had the thought that I should find and console Wiki. The others were already twenty paces away.

I stepped forward and fell straight into a gap in the ground.

–

I turned as I fell. Down was ninety degrees off from where it had been, so I over-rotated and rose into the air a bit. My knee bent painfully backward, but I managed to avoid tumbling to the floor.

“I’m getting better at that,” said Yukari. She was behind her fan. “Hello, Mister Thorne. It’s time for our monthly review.” She was wearing what I was coming to think of as her ‘formal’ outfit, which didn’t show off any cleavage.

We were in an underground chamber. There were iron bars to my right and manacles hanging from the wall to my left. There was no grate for air or light to get in. The scene was so dark it was almost monochrome. When I looked at Yukari, I couldn’t tell if her dress was purple or gold.

“Where are we?” I asked. I didn’t know of any jail cells in Gensokyo, although I gave even odds that Wiki would know about one or another.

“In a jail cell,” said Yukari. “I thought you were observant, Mister Thorne.”

“I continue to suspect that you understand my questions perfectly.”

“Indeed, a more observant person would stop asking them.”

I sighed. “Alright. So what is this meeting about?”

“I wish to request feedback,” she said.

“Do you wish for me to give feedback, or is just requesting it enough?”

She laughed. “Oh, Jake, you are observant!” I was observant enough to notice her using my first name. It made me strangely uncomfortable. “But no, I do want spoken feedback. My perspective is wide, like a sieve, and sometimes the grit and sand of daily life falls through.”

“You’ve been watching our every move,” I said.

“I can see the entirety of Gensokyo, save for the thoughts of the inhabitants.”

I looked around for a suspicious portal with a suspicious eye.

“Satori is busy with the festival,” said Yukari.

“I thought she wasn’t running a booth?”

“She isn’t.” Yukari fluttered her fan. “I’ve opened the floor, but I can ask specific questions if you don’t have anything to volunteer?”

“Well, I actually have a list,” I said. I pulled out my notebook, which I’d bought from Rinnosuke’s shop after convincing him that small notebooks were primarily for jotting down ideas that were useless. If the paper was to be crumpled up and thrown away, it couldn’t be that valuable.

“Excellent!” she said. “I’d love to hear you tell me about it.”

So I started telling Yukari my problems with how she ran Gensokyo, and I worked in as many questions as possible.